


without no seam nor needlework

by resident_longwinded_anon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Healing, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Issues, Stylistic, Torture, bucky barnes recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6900421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resident_longwinded_anon/pseuds/resident_longwinded_anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they cut poems in his skin and burn lies beneath his eyes, they stick wires in his ears and remove great slabs of his stomach, they peel his humanity away from him in strips and let flies feast on the remains - but oh, lord, he is always alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	without no seam nor needlework

**Author's Note:**

> So this is not SPN (as you can quite obviously tell) but it's also the first thing I've finished in over a year (as you can tell with a little bit of clicking through my profile) and I'm a little bit in love with it (as you can tell by my posting it at all).
> 
> This is a lot of things, but mostly it's all my most current Bucky feelings running together - feelings about strength and stubbornness and immortality and willfulness and identity and fear and pain and hope and colors and occasionally strangely intense descriptions of specific acts of torture. (If there are any oddly specific triggers you need to look out for, please shoot me a message here or on my [Tumblr](http://resident-longwinded-anon.tumblr.com/), where this was [originally posted](http://resident-longwinded-anon.tumblr.com/post/144591987541/without-no-seam-nor-needlework). I'd be happy to oblige!)
> 
> Inspiration, title, and headings from Scarborough Fair, by god-knows-who. My favorite version (and the one that sparked this fic) is ["Scarborough Fair/Canticle"](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjmqZyrv-XMAhWkz4MKHfqOCsMQtwIIKDAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-Jj4s9I-53g&usg=AFQjCNFQkrd4QbDLtNgwAUa_0lXX-c1NwA&sig2=2VpL9TutjWQj_VUuT1xmcQ) recorded by Simon and Garfunkel.

**Parsley ~ Purification**

first, he is baptized by snow. he falls into a drift of it, several feet deep, and while it by no means softens his landing it does at least do him the dignity of not needing to look at the train while he dies. the drift implodes over him with a soft  _ pfft _ , and the small cutout of sky he can see vanishes.

now it is only white. white, and pain.

the pain starts in his chest, right next to his heart, and journeys through his body from there like a soldier abseiling down a cliff. it nests in his left shoulder. he cannot turn his head, but when he moves his eyes in that direction, the white stops being white in favor of some other color entirely - first red, and then brown, and then black, darkening the longer he lays here.

there is also pain in his feet, though it is lesser. perhaps a broken bone or two. or six or nine. it's hard to tell. it's not as bad as the pain in his head, which careens from one ear to another like a grenade skittering down a hill. that's not as bad as the pain in his neck, which if he did not know better he would think is broken. that's not as bad as the pain in fingers, each of which is snapped and scraped raw by his desperate scramble for handholds.

a funny thing happens, as he stays there in his world of white and pain, though both of those things are fading fast - the former as night falls, the latter as the cold steals away what's left of him. he hears something.

at first he dismisses it as death-hallucinations, brought on by fear and hurt and a heart meting out its last tired beats. if he were not buried in snow, he would surely be wild with fever. it is a marvel he is not dead already. (it is a marvel he does not want to be.)

then when the ground starts to roll under him, and his white blanket shifts and falls, he puts it down to the ground shifting beneath him. avalanches are all too common here, and it is easy enough to lose one's footing even when the hills are quiet, as he proved too well. he has already fallen. it is not that much of a stretch to believe that he has managed this, too, to disrupt the world even as he lays here in death.

but when he sees the faces, he has to concede the truth - he has been found.

he is not naive enough to hope these people mean good. he recognizes none of the faces among them, and they carry weapons he can't strip with his eyes. but they are people, and even if they want him for ill, he is sure they will not let him die.

he goes to sleep.

they bathe him in warm water, to which he slowly comes awake. this is his second baptism: under soft hands and softer words and soap that smells so strongly of lye it makes him open his eyes. he was right - they did not let him die. nor will they, if the attitude in the room is any indication. he is too important.

his final baptism is in torture.

they start with the simplest: they cut off his arm. it is useless anyway, he knows. it hangs at his side, a dead thing, blue and black and pocked with scars. his fingers at the end are bent at right angles from his fall, but they don't cause him pain anymore. (the fingers of his right hand are a different story, and one he cares not to dwell on.) after his bath, they force him to his fragile feet and walk him down the hall, where they strap him to a table and stop treating his arm with even minimal care.

they bring out the saw; he closes his eyes and turns his head away, but they slap him for it. they intend him to be awake for this, and as aware as they can make him. it is perhaps the basest and the most disgusting of human cruelties he has yet to see, but he cannot help being viciously glad at the pain: it is proof he is alive.

even though he comes to hate the pain as much as the people who deal it, it is always proof he is alive. they cut poems in his skin and burn lies beneath his eyes, they stick wires in his ears and remove great slabs of his stomach, they peel his humanity away from him in strips and let flies feast on the remains - but oh, lord, he is always alive.

**Sage ~ Immortality**

they are pleased with him when they discover he cannot die. they are not so pleased with the trainer who discovers it - she shoots a bullet two inches too low, what should be a kill shot straight into the center of his brain. it is, for a bit. they tell him he was dead for two minutes and forty-eight seconds, but also that he woke up with only the barest headache and a twitching trigger finger. they let him have at her, the trainer who almost destroyed him. he smashes her into the ground, not because she almost killed him, but because she revealed to them what he has suspected for a while: this body cannot die.

after the incident, of course, follow more tests, these closely monitored and carried out by only the most trusted and revered of the scientists. they desanguinate him. they run wires of sizzling electricity through his veins. they pump him so full of drugs and poison a small part of his brain actually leaks out of his ear, but he's as alive as ever.

(he hears they scrape what was left of the erroneous trainer off the ground where he left her, squish her into a small box of solid gold, and give it a place of honor in the boss's office.)

once they've figured this out, his uses are twofold: they still train him, of course, for shooting down prey one-handed and squeezing answers out of men who wish not to give them, but they also cut him open, pry him out, and try to discover what makes him deathless.

they're cautious, at first, mindful of that first trainer's mistake, and wary lest they end up as she, but as time goes on they become much more careless. what begins as cutting his chest open and peeling back the skin to examine his rib cage soon becomes as routine as cracking open a tin of tuna, and quickly evolves into people actually taking his organs out of his chest and making him watch as they prod at them. they stop short of his heart, but only just.

the worst of it is that, back in his cell (much larger than it used to be, since he started shooting what they point at and only speaking when spoken to), his flesh knits itself back together without a mark. his chest is smooth and almost hairless when he runs his hand over it. if it were not for the memories that populate his mind like leeches, he wouldn't believe it if someone told him. even with the memories, there are entire swathes of time during which he becomes quite certain he is in hell. people tell tales of unending torture, and this is that. maybe the hope that he is still alive is just another one of hell's manifold tortures. it is certainly one of his captors'.

this fear pushes him to run faster when they tell him too, to run until the floor under his feet blurs and he can almost convince himself he's flying. it drives him to keep moving, constantly, to be utterly sure of every beat of his heart. it makes him much less reluctant, when they come to him and put a gun in his hand, to point it at someone else and shoot. he has taken lives before. every time he takes one now, he reminds himself that someone can't die in hell. he is killing, so he must be alive.

it is a tired sort of logic, but it carries him through.

**Rosemary ~ Memory**

they take his memory from him in great swathes. first through the lightning, to drive him into their arms. they think if they take away his home and his history and the person he loves, he'll stop fighting them. they overestimate his selflessness. they overestimate perhaps everything about him, except his need to survive.

it becomes apparent, after a time, that he is aging, despite his unkillable state. it perplexes them, annoys them, and eventually terrifies them. a weapon like this, one which they still have not been able to replicate, that rusts and creaks with time? something must be done to stop this.

something turns out to be the ice. he hears that dozens of soldiers died in making sure it would work. not that it wouldn't kill him, he understands - the cold was one of many tortures they put him through, one of many deaths they tested - but just to make sure it operated at maximum efficiency. least cost incurred for most flesh preserved. he fights when they try to strap him down, and they laugh at him. he has suffered so much already, they tell him. this will ease that. he can finally, finally sleep.

he does not want to sleep. sleep is too like death.

when he will not go in willingly, they bring back the needles, one of their oldest and most well-worn tortures. they drive them into his feet and make him walk a mile, footsteps tracing a slow red circle from the entry of the ice to his cell and back again. by the time he makes it all the way back, his prints have gone brown and flaky at the edges. they make him stand to wait as they re-prep the ice chamber. they think he would prefer the ice to the pain. they think he would prefer anything to the pain.

he runs from them, even with the needles in his feet. he discovered early on that if he drives them into the meat of his foot, his body will heal right over them. he waits for them to heal well enough to stand it, and then he runs as fast and as far as he can.

he runs very fast, but he doesn't make it very far.

they bind his legs together. they tie him to a gurney, so he can't move, and try to force him into the ice. he casts about with his arm, knocks them down as easy and precise as he can down senators from thirty yards. they don't laugh at him any more.

they also don't mess around with needles or with blades, or with anything so base. they are much more elegant. they simply send him into unconsciousness and put him into the ice before he awakes.

when he comes out, he only remembers the fear, the pain, and the desire to have more of both.

**Thyme ~ Healing**

he does not come home willingly. perhaps that is the wrong way to phrase it, because he does choose to go home. he is the one who makes the decision to return. he is the one who rouses himself from his stupor and engages with the world. he is the one who maneuvers his body through crowds and terrors and memories and eventually gets it to his goal. all of those are worth remarking upon, after so many decades where he could do none of those things.

he does not come home  _ knowingly _ .

it is not  _ home _ to him, not in those early hallowed days when he is still coming back to himself. it is simply the place where he feels more alive than he does everywhere else. he tries to explain, first to himself and then to the others. he has no real reason to feel alive here, except for people's recognition of him, and even that can be faked. he remembers enough of his first life to know that there were people who cared for him, and people he cared for, and touch that didn't hurt all of the time. he supposes some of those people could be here now. some of that touch could belong to them.

he takes his memory back in great swathes. it starts with names - 'steve' and 'jim' and 'peggy,' 'gabe' and 'howard' and 'alex.' it continues with colors, white and red at first, and then, piece by piece, several different shades of blue. when he describes this experience to steve, in careful halting words, the man doubles over with laughter before explaining the significance of the colors. he learns new names ('tony' and 'sam' and 'tasha') and new colors (yellow and purple and green), and he learns of a name that, supposedly, belongs to him. it does not feel comfortable yet. he does not use it.

he has learned from experience that anything can feel comfortable after a time, even things like leeches or needles or ice. if this name is really so important, he should not sully it so. if it isn't, if it is instead like all the other things he learned to be comforted by, he should not risk it.

after latching on to colors so early in recovery, steve decides that he should have access to a whole host of art supplies. he does not like the pencils, too sharp and too like the shafts of wood they loved to shove under his fingernails. the crayons are satisfying to draw with at first, until he realizes what their smell reminds him of. (they tested his immortality and his healing with heat. it was decided wax would be the most efficient delivery system.) steve buys him new ones after, made without wax, but the effect is ruined. the markers are also nice, but ultimately he finds they're too unwieldy. they bleed over lines or sink through paper, taking up too much space in a way that reminds him uncannily of himself. those he throws out the window.

the paints, though. not the watercolors, which are too much of a hassle, but the big gloppy ones he can dump out on sheets of paper and kneel in and mix with his hands. (both of his hands are his, now.) he used to ground himself with mud, on missions. he would feel it beneath the palm of his hand and remind himself with every sticky smear that he was alive, alive,  _ alive _ . the paints are yielding and tactile in the same way.

steve comes home one afternoon to find him kneeling in front of a spread of paper, each painted a different shade of blue. he looks up at steve, framed in the doorway, caught breathless and bright as though he cannot believe this moment is happening. he asks steve what the colors are.

why, they're blue, steve says.

yes, but what  _ kind _ of blue?

why does this blue - a pure, pale color, like the sky but deeper - make him feel more alive than this blue - a muddy almost-green shade - or this blue - dark and shadowed like wall when he stares at it for too long - or any of the other blues?

steve blinks at him. well, he points to a rich navy blue, this one is the color of captain america's suit. this one is the color of the water at the docks, back when we were kids. this one is the color of the sky the night that we found the one-oh-seventh. he carefully describes each of the blues, giving a time or an association for each one.

they all make sense. they all fit into his gaping mind like puzzle pieces. there is the blue of his sister's favorite childhood dress. the blue of mold on bread too long damp. the blue of rare, delicious cheeses they sampled in a blown-out patisserie in the war.

there is also the blue, steve so carefully susses out, of the inside of the ice chamber. the blue of his arm before they cut it off. the blue tones his skin would turn after they bled him dry.

with steve's help, he sorts the list into good blues and bad blues. some he's not so certain of, like the night of his initial rescue. others he actually has to cover over, once he realizes what they signify. at the end of it all, there's one piece of blue paper sitting between him and steve.

what about this one? he asks.

steve blushes. well, he says.

it's the very first color he indicated, the one that makes him feel the most alive. that feeling, the actually existing feeling, multiplies in his chest with each beat of silence. he will burst from it.

well, steve says, that's the color of my eyes.

he goes silent for a long time after that. a lot more things make a lot more sense now than they did before, not least of which the broken way steve always says his name.

_ his _ name.

are you okay? steve asks.  


no, bucky says. but i think i will be.


End file.
